


Learning Curves

by lindsey_grissom



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-06
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode-Tag to 3x13 <b>The Verdict in the Story</b>: <i>Bones tells him she helps him to evolve.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Curves

He never tells her how many languages he speaks. Of course, she never asks him either but they just don’t work that way. He should tell her and she should get that little crinkle on her forehead with wide eyes and he should know he’s surprised her again.

He won’t tell her though and because she never actually asks that’s not lying to her, right? He knows she keeps things from him too, anyway.

But then she does ask, because isn’t that just his luck? And because he really can’t lie to her he laughs it off _{“you’re the one who tells me I barely speak English, Bones”}_ and asks her to teach him.

He knows it’s wrong but what else can he do? And it’s sort of true if he thinks about it all Bones-like and literal. Because he doesn’t know everything, he doesn’t know how to tear the languages apart into semantics and grammar and he doesn’t know how to make full sentences out of every word he knows.

But he does know how to swear and shout in most of them. And he does know which words to listen for when the enemy is all around you and sometimes just one word can make the difference between a few days in the desert and a month. But when she looks at him, eager to show him that she knows something he doesn’t but that he could, how can he tell her that in over fifteen languages he knows how to beg _{“leave them alone you son of a bitch, take me. Take me”}_ and plead?

++

++

Bones tells him she helps him to evolve. She tells him that every time he understands a little more of their Squint-talk he’s growing into a better more rational person. She tells him that that isn’t what she said, exactly, and that he’s turning _{“twisting, Bones. Twisting”}_ her words.

She doesn’t tell him that the more he relies on her science the better he is at his job. She doesn’t have to because he’s already learnt that.

++

++

She watches him from beside her brother, behind her father on the wrong side or the right side or maybe just the _other_ side of the courtroom and he realises he’s where she should be in this little twisted tableaux; in the middle.

And then the defence Attorney takes him down a familiar path and yanks the ground right out from under him.

His heart pounds and his hands sweat and he knows from the concern in her eyes that his own are probably damp with his pain.

The courtroom fades and there’s only her eyes and then they’re sitting in a booth at the diner and Cam’s barely out of the door and those sea-storm eyes are telling him that manipulating the evidence is always, always wrong and he looks into those eyes and doesn’t tell her she’s right.

Then there’s the question he’s known was coming from the moment he heard his own motives out loud and he’s back in the middle and there’s right and there’s wrong and there’s _her_ on one side with a nod _{“that’s a lot of heart, Bones”}_ and this is what he’s taught her.

There’s justice and there’s truth and they’re not always the same. And it goes against everything he’s been taught and everything he’s taught himself not to tell them how hard she gripped his jacket when she saw all that blood. He defends her honour because no one else here will, not even herself and it feels like the ground shaking underneath him when he tells them what she needs them to hear.

Justice and truth. Heart and Brain. This is what he’s taught her. The foundations shift; he didn’t think she’d ever lead with her heart like this.

 

 **  
_End._   
**


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